And break free of debt
Would you like to reform Ontario’s criminal justice system while transferring $45 million annually to expenses like education, housing and social services? This might sound a little idealistic and simplistic, but it is in fact a possibility that we as Law students can help realize with little effort.
I first learned about the Criminalization and Punishment Education Project (CPEP) on March 15, 2019, while attending the “Detained: From Protecting Prisoners to Abolishing Prisons” conference at Osgoode Hall Law School. The event explored the difficulty of moving toward abolition and avoiding inadvertently strengthening the carceral system through critical reform. CPEP believes the first step is a moratorium on prison expansion. Its mandate is to carry out public education initiatives and research on criminological issues, with a specific focus on the injustices of Canada’s carceral system. Currently, they have a petition called #NOPE—No On Prison Expansion, to protest the replacement and expansion of the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre.
CPEP spokesperson Justin Piché has crunched the numbers and determined that the proposed new prison would cost $11 million more annually than the current facility. His estimate, based on Infrastructure Ontario’s projected budget for construction, design, and maintenance, is that around $45 million per year will be spent on the prison. Piché identified all the social services that have been cut by the Ford government while this prison expansion was approved, and challenged everyone at the conference to consider how the $45 million could be used to better serve communities and the province. He prompted all the law students in the room to ask the Ford government to divert some to funding OSAP.
Some will wonder about the very real issue of overcrowding in prisons. While increasing the number of prison cells in the province is a short term solution, it does not address the real causes of prison overcrowding. 70% of incarcerated individuals on any given day are actually in pre-trial detention, not necessarily waiting on a conviction that will require more incarceration. We do not need more beds, we need efficient and judicially fair processes to deal with the backlog of cases. We also need to address the criminalization of poverty and mental health which incarcerates people who need treatment or social assistance more than, and as alternatives to, rehabilitation.
Ultimately, we should demand appropriate social services for all, and more funding for education, including our own.
Just last year, on separate occasions, two men who were denied proper and timely psychiatric care died by suicide at OCDC. Their deaths were due to factors such as lack of capacity in hospitals and lack of sensitivity training for guards. A prison expansion does nothing to address these issues and will simply allow the government to forestall its response. In fact, former Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, Yasir Naqvi, has said that an expansion would fail taxpayers.
The OCDC is in a decrepit state and in need of substantial repairs. Yet, this presents an opportunity to rethink how we criminalize individuals. Maybe by now we can admit that putting people in cages and segregation, in spaces without access to proper health care or support from loved ones, is not the solution of a twenty-first-century society. Maybe we can get serious about turning toward harm reduction and Gladue principles and addressing ‘deviant’ behaviour with empathy, rather than condemnation. Maybe we can be honest about the fact that the disproportionate incarceration of poor and marginalized individuals reflects larger systemic issues of inequality and inequity—issues that cannot be fixed by locking individuals away for years in concrete boxes.
Ultimately, we should demand appropriate social services for all, and more funding for education, including our own. Please join with me in writing to Premier Doug Ford and demanding #NOPE No Ontario Prison Expansion, because that $45 million annually would be better used in part to fund our education to get us into the courtrooms working for justice.
If you would like to know more about CPEP, their petition, and problems with the Ontario criminal justice system, please explore the below links:
CPEP: http://cp-ep.org/.
Piché’s Calculations: http://tpcp-canada.blogspot.com/2018/09/small-government-in-ontario-under.html
Toronto South Detention Centre: https://torontolife.com/city/inside-toronto-south-detention-centre-torontos-1-billion-hellhole/
